This invention relates to a new and distinct variety of mushroom plant of Shiitake mushroom, Lentinula edodes (Berk.) Pegler. This new variety named ‘HOKSY 8’ cultivated by repeated breeding of Shiitake mushrooms having dominant traits, which has low malformation rates, hardly breakable lamella, and enhanced cultivation stability and ensures presentable stability, reproducibility, and uniformity.
Shiitake mushroom is an edible mushroom having the highest amount of production in Japan, which accounts for 69.1 billion yen as fresh shiitake mushrooms and 9.2 billion yen as dry shiitake mushrooms according to statistics in 2014. However, since those who engage in the production of shiitake mushrooms are mainly subsistence farmers, the supply of shiitake mushrooms is influenced by weather and the like, and therefore it is difficult to stably supply shiitake mushrooms. Accordingly, there is a strong demand in the market for the stable supply of shiitake mushrooms by our company, and therefore our company has been conducting a wide variety of studies for the stable production of shiitake mushrooms. Our company has developed a ‘HOKSY 3’ mushroom, which is excellent at cultivation property and has white stipe and lamella. Nevertheless, the ‘HOKSY 3’ mushroom has many problems in terms of quality in that its malformation rate is high and the lamella tends to be broken when the size of its pileus become large.
As a result of continuing breed improvement by cross breeding so as to improve the abovementioned problems and further enhance cultivation stability, a ‘HOKSY 8’ mushroom was developed that was improved in terms of the malformation rates and the lamella liable to be broken, as compared with the ‘HOKSY 3’ mushroom, and had higher cultivation stability than the ‘HOKSY 3’ mushroom.